School & Education « American Family

IEP

I am going to change gears a little. Today, I had L’s annual IEP meeting. The best thing about it was I didn’t cry (unlike last year). It is amazing how much of a difference a competent teacher is making for L. She also has an Occupational Therapist who is really working to help unravel L’s sensory issues.

Even though she has made a lot of progress this year, L still has an IEP for sensory differences (big time sensory seeker with visual and vestibular issues) and social-emotional delays. The sensory issues L has basically make it nearly impossible for her to sit still and pay attention if she doesn’t have the right sensory diet. For L, that means deep pressure and/or vestibular input (ball pit, hotdog wrap, swinging, etc.) L craves deep pressure. When she gets it, it is amazing the difference it makes for her ability to pay attention. She goes from a distracting, silly, wiggle worm, to a kid who can sit straight up in her seat and pay attention for 15 or 20 minutes straight, if you just give her a good back scratching.

L’s social-emotional issues are less obvious this year than they were last year when she would totally shut down in class. This year, superficially, she is ok. She has friends, she does play with them appropriately one on one, But when there is a group of kids, L checks out. I think part of her issue is that she is generally behind the curve socially. She hits all the milestones, just at the back end of the normal curve. (I tend to follow the “family years” theory. L has been with us for 4 years, so even though she is 5 years old, I am not surprised if she is more emotionally like a 4 year old in some ways.) L’s teachers also think her social skills in large groups are really impacted by her inability to modulate the sensory input she is getting (too many kids talking, too much activity for her to respond quickly enough, etc.), so she leaves the group and plays alone or seeks out non-group play. She might be a bit of an introvert too.

Any way you want to look at it, L’s teachers are on top of her issues this year. We are having her wait an additional year to start kindergarten, so she will have another year to catch up. Socially, I think that will make a big difference for her.

Unfortunately, it looks like L will not qualify for an IEP for sensory issues when she finally starts kindergarten. While I am very pleased with her progress this year, I am afraid all her progress is going to go out the window if she is not receiving the right kind of sensory support in the classroom. I am also worried L might bounce around for a couple years before her teachers start insisting she has ADD (as her teacher last year said–along with about 8 other diagnoses including diabetes(!!)none of which ended up going anywhere.)

I have until January to do my research and then we will start the transition from her preschool IEP into the kindergarten mainstream. If there is any hope of an IEP in preschool, we will hire either a disability advocate or an attorney to make sure L can keep her IEP. I am hopeful that L’s kindergarten teacher voluntarily try to accommodate her needs, I tend to think a legal requirement wouldn’t hurt.

Speshul Snowflakes

I was going to write an interesting blog post, but instead I spent my entire evening getting stuff together for M’s “star of the week” project.

And when I say “M’s project” apparently what I really mean is MY project.

But lest we decide to do a crappy job on this very important project, there is the guilt factor to consider. As the handout says:

“Self-esteem is a crucial building block; the foundation of one’s self-image. Make this a memorable opportunity for your child to shine!”

Translation:

If you do a bad job, your kid will be embarrassed. If you make a crappy poster, you will have no one to blame but yourself when your child is a self-hating teenage rebel with no friends.

And so I am spending all night printing out pictures that will help create a poster that will give M “a chance to feel terrific”!!!

I Hate My Skin (pt.3)

After I said Chinese New Year wasn’t likely to help L like her skin any better, I got nothing but a blank stare from the principal.

“I don’t want you to think I am making a bigger deal out of this than I am,” I said. ”I understand that recognizing differences is developmentally appropriate in preschool. We are comfortable talking to L about race and other differences. I just wanted to find out of there was an incident, because if something like that happened, I would want to address it differently with L than if this is just her letting us know that she is noticing thing on her own.” ( I had asked L if there was an incident several times, but she always said no. I just wanted to check in with the teachers to be sure.)

The assistant teacher said “I don’t think any kids in this class even notice differences!”

I knew that was a bunch of hooey. The class is about 40-50% not white. When I was there for the halloween party, one little African American girl couldn’t figure out which kid I was attached to. When I told her I was L’s mom, she looked at me, looked at L and looked back at me. ”I don’t THINK so.” she said shaking her head with one eyebrow raised doubtfully.

Kids this age notice race. There is no reason to pretend that isn’t true. L talks about kids in her class who have certain disabilities, darker skin, etc. That doesn’t bother me at all because she wasn’t viewing these things as good or bad. She just never put it in context of herself before and the negativity is what gave me pause.

“It is just so sad that L doesn’t like the way she looks!” the assistant teacher said, “I don’t know why she would think that! We ALWAYS tell L how cute she is…and in her case it is really TRUE!”

And again, things in my brain kind of skipped a beat. True, I think L is a cute enough kid. What about the uncute kids? Are they just telling them they are cute but they don’t really mean it? I almost started laughing out loud.

It was clear we were not on the same page, so I decided to just let it go (with the teachers) for now. I am not convinced that anything they try to do about it won’t cause more problems than it will help and we will be leaving for our trip soon. By the time we get back, L will likely have a very different understanding of being Chinese and we can see where things are then. I thanked them for their time and got us the heck out of there.

I was glad we had the meeting because I have a better idea of what might have happened to lead to L saying she wants white skin like XYZ. I am guessing that they were talking about different and the same and the issue of skin color was probably brought up. I am guessing the three kids in question (who happen to be white boys) were playing together and L wanted to play. They probably said no.

L is not the most socially adept kid and sometimes she doesn’t catch all the angles in group play situations. Because they were talking about skin color in class, it is possible that L decided that they said she couldn’t play because she doesn’t have white skin. She never said anyone said that directly to her, so I think maybe she made that conclusion on her own. She could just have easily decided they wouldn’t play with her because she was a girl, but I think the class conversation had her thinking about her skin for the first time.

Since the first few weeks when this happened, we have talked more about differences with L. We aren’t making a big deal out of it, but she has let us know she is understanding more. She has also moved on from saying she hates things so often. Now she is more focused on telling me she won’t be my friend or M’s friend when she is looking for attention.

So thats it. The first time we have to deal with this stuff at school. Ugh.

IEP

Speshul Snowflakes

I Hate My Skin (pt.3)

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